Published on December 3, 2025

What was going on with the PS3?

A phrase that I return to from time to time is that when a game has a certain set of qualities, it can “feel like a PS3 game.” Immortals of Aveum, for example, a game that came out in 2023, felt like it would have been right at home on Sony’s flagship console of 2007. This isn’t always something I use as a mean-spirited critique but more to refer to something intangible in the game’s design that ties it to the PS3. I’ve been trying to nail down what about that era lends itself to comparisons to games that are not typical 10-out-of-10 experiences. I’ve got some ideas about what was going on then and why the legacy of the PS3 is what it is.

Adherence to technical progress over all else

The era just prior to the PS3 was partially characterized by mind-boggling technical advancement. Even at the launch of the PS2, people were talking about how impressive a machine the PS2 already was, and that trend continued through its lifespan. If you compare the kinds of games that were coming out at the launch of the PS2 to the ones at the end of its lifecycle, they nearly look like different consoles. However, a caveat that seemed to accompany this advancement was that the pursuit of technical achievement in games often led to an experience that might look pretty neat but didn’t actually have anything fun to keep you around for the long term.

The PS3 took this trend and amplified it. Suddenly developers had far more graphical resources and even more financial investment than they ever had before, and so you saw things like Lair, where you could control a dragon by tilting the Sixaxis controller. Was it a neat demo of the possibility of motion controls? Absolutely, but that was not enough to keep most folks around for the full runtime of the game. There was also Heavenly Sword, which had a big-name actor in the form of Andy Serkis and was genuinely impressive visually. However, actually playing the game didn’t deliver on the promise of being a spiritual successor to the God of War franchise that the marketing was pushing. Point being: I think this was a moment where the dramatic technical progress that started with things like the PS1 and the N64 was starting to hit diminishing returns, but it took PlayStation until the end of the PS3’s lifespan to suss that out.

A visible angst in the lack of PlayStation identity

I asked some other TWG members about this very question, and Into the Aether’s own Stephen Hilger correctly pointed out that PlayStation’s most beloved consoles are likely the PS1 and PS2, and yet those are also the consoles that have some of the best third-party support. Put differently, PlayStation’s first-party lineup is often not enough to make or break a console, and it is only when they have the support of a number of other third-party developers that their consoles flourish.

In this way, we can see the PS3 as a sort of overconfidence in their own library. Famously, the PlayStation 3’s hardware was wildly difficult to develop for, and many third-party developers simply opted to build for the Xbox 360 instead. In an interview with CNET in 2009, Kaz Hirai (CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment at the time) made a statement on this point that reads as baffling in hindsight. He said:

“We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that developers want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is, what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years? So it is a kind of, I wouldn’t say a double-edged sword, but it is hard to program for, and a lot of people see the negatives of it, but if you flip that around, it means the hardware has a lot more to offer.”

Whether this was someone attempting to justify a poorly optimized console or someone who believed that their product would become more prestigious by gatekeeping who could develop for it, the fact remains that their aim was not to allow as many games on their console as possible. To me, this speaks to Sony wanting to claim their own identity and stand out in the field without having the hits that a company like Nintendo did.

Nowhere is this ideology more present than PlayStation All-Stars. This is a game that is clearly trying to emulate the success of Smash Bros. and is pulling in what Sony sees as their own mega-hit characters. Some of the cast are undeniably iconic, but the game itself just isn’t great. Said differently, Sony is relying on the aesthetics of their hit games but is unable to back that up with a formula that lands correctly, and the result mostly ends up feeling like a poor impersonation of a different series. After all, who could forget their first battle with Polygon Man?

But hey, I liked LittleBigPlanet

I realize that there were certainly games that worked well on the PS3, but those hits feel more like the exception than the rule. Things like Uncharted were a formula that would eventually become the cornerstone of what the PS4 capitalized on, but that does not feel representative of that generation. The Last of Us also came out damn near the end of the PS3’s lifecycle and feels more like what they would go on to make rather than a culmination of the past.

There are likely far more things than just these two points, but I’m curious what you think. What is the je ne sais quoi of the PS3 in your mind? Is that even any different from the Xbox 360? Should I be lumping in Red Steel as a PS3 game even though it was a Wii launch title? Think about it!